Lola Carlyle Reveals All

think you’ll find that interesting, sir.”

General Winter glanced through the bound leather book, then looked up. “This is the reason I put up with you, Max,” he said as he hit a button on his intercom. “You have more lives than a damn cat and more luck than the Irish. Now get out of here and get yourself checked out.”

Max refused the general’s order of medical attention and was escorted from the room by security personnel. He rode an elevator to the VIP parking lot, where a black Cadillac waited for him. Once inside the backseat of car, he leaned his head back and finally relaxed for the first time since he’d sat in the galley of the Dora Mae, eating red snapper with Lola. He didn’t let himself relax completely, though, fearing he’d fall asleep if he did. The lights of D.C. sped past the windows, and the sound of the tires on wet pavement filled the interior of the car, letting him know that it had rained. The sights and sounds were familiar ones and reminded him he was home. Almost.

After a short fifteen-minute drive, the Cadillac pulled up in front of Max’s two-hundred-year-old townhouse in Alexandria. Now he was home. Finally. Max stepped from the car and tapped on the roof. The Caddie sped away, its tires splashing in inky puddles of water. The lights on the outside of the townhouse shone as they’d been programmed, but four days’ worth of the Journal were flung on his porch. Since he hadn’t anticipated being gone more than a day, he hadn’t suspended service.

He didn’t have a key. He didn’t need one. When he’d purchased the townhouse three years ago, he’d designed and installed his own security system.

An exterior and interior keypad controlled the motion detectors, the exterior lights, and the locks on the doors. Max walked up the steps to the front door, flipped open the keypad, and punched in his code. He picked up the soggy newspapers and moved through the dark house to the kitchen. Beneath the sink, he pulled out the rubber garbage pail and dumped the papers into the empty trash bag.

Pale moon, and light from the back porch, poured in through the window above the sink, lighting patches of forties-red countertops, cabbage-rose wallpaper, and his chrome coffee-maker. Except for the security system and the new pipes he’d had installed in the two bathrooms, he hadn’t quite gotten around to remodeling the townhouse like he’d always planned.

Without turning on the lights, he walked up the stairs to his bedroom on the second level. The hardwood floors creaked beneath his weight, and he sat on the edge of his mattress to unlace his boots. He’d been awake for forty- eight hours, and unbidden, memories of Lola rose in his head. Images of her bathing on the swimming platform of the Dora Mae. Kissing her on the aft deck. Holding her in his arms as the storm threatened to swamp the yacht. Touching and kissing her bare breasts, then making love to her as the sun set over an uncharted tropical island somewhere in the Atlantic. Hot memories and images flowed through him and he was too tired to fight them.

He took off his clothes and stood completely naked. Light from outside crept in around the shade covering the window. It striped the floor and lit up an edge of the dresser. Max stepped over the heap of clothes and reached for a battered St. Christopher medallion hanging from one corner of the mirror. He raised his arms and placed the gold medallion around his neck. It had belonged to his father, and the cool metal was familiar against his chest.

The crisp bedsheets brushed his skin as he slid between them, and he wondered if Lola slept well wherever she happened to be. The last he’d seen of her, she’d looked pale and exhausted, and he imagined she’d been kept for observation in the hospital.

He thought of calling Key West to check on her condition. Then he thought better of it. It would be best to make a clean break. To stay out of her life. Not because General Winter had told him to, but because even as the responsibility of Lola and her dog had weighed him down and choked the air from his throat, he’d come to crave it. There was something about the warmth of her eyes. The way she’d looked at him. The way she’d shared her life and her body. Something that expanded his chest. A place deep inside he hadn’t known for certain existed within his soul. Something reckless that made him ditch his better judgment and make love to her while ignoring the danger of that wild rash act. Something that consumed reason and caution and made him crave it all over again.

He’d saved her from drowning, and he’d saved her from drug runners. He hadn’t been so lucky. He hadn’t been able to save himself from her.

It was definitely best for both of them if he stayed away. She did not belong in his life, and he certainly didn’t fit into hers.

One of the good things that came out of Lola’s disappearance was all the press it generated. The same day the news of her disappearance was reported, her Lola Undercover line of delicately embroidered merry widows and silk nighties with cut-out roses and matching thongs had sold out and were now on back order. During those four days, catalog sales had topped projections by sixty-three percent.

Business was thriving. Life was good, and even the Enquirer was taking a break from calling her a heavyweight. Now the cut line read, Buxom Lola Finally Found. She’d take buxom over heavyweight or Large Lola any day.

The Enquirer had generated a story about her supposed elopement with a strange man she’d met in the Crystal Palace Casino. Another tabloid speculated that she’d been in hiding because of a plastic surgery blunder, but Lola’s favorite was a report that she’d been abducted by aliens and was living in a small wilderness town in the Northwest.

All of the speculation had given her more press than she could have bought, and they’d had to increase production of the Cleavage Clicker to meet demand.

The Lola Wear, Inc., offices were spread out over a ten-thousand-foot space in one of five old renovated tobacco warehouses in downtown Durham. The once-crumbling district had been transformed into an upscale eclectic blend of retail business, offices, and apartments. Lola had chosen to lease the space not only because it fit her needs, but because it was a part of her history. She had a connection here. A lot of her relatives had worked in the same warehouse, cranking out Chesterfields until the layoffs of the late seventies. Sometimes, on especially humid days, Lola could almost smell the sweet scent of tobacco leaves.

Anxious to get back to her life, she’d returned to her home and to her work the Friday after she’d been plucked from the Atlantic. But by two in the afternoon, she wasn’t so sure she should have come in. It had taken the entire morning and part of the afternoon for Lola to be brought up to speed on what had taken place since she’d last checked in the Saturday before. Now she was so tired she just wanted to curl up and take a nap.

Instead, she shut the door to her office, letting everyone know that she wanted some time to herself. Every few minutes someone had popped his or her head in her office with a flimsy excuse or question. She knew they were just reassuring themselves that she was truly alive and back at work. It was sweet, but a bit overwhelming.

She was planning to launch a new line of no-wire seamless bras and panties this spring, and she had the sketches of promotional booths for the spring trade show in Madison Square Garden to look over. The line of microfiber lingerie had been created by the lead designer, Gina, and had huge market potential. The high-tech fabric breathed and moved with the body and had only one drawback. The bras could only support up to a C cup, although the company that held the patent on the material claimed support up to a D. Lola herself had tested the validity of the claim and had been less than satisfied. Lola Wear, Inc., would have to add an underwire in all seamless bras over a C cup.

She sat behind her desk in her brushed leather chair and slipped off her red Manolo Blahnik pumps. She spread her toes in the thick area rug and studied the sketches. But the more she looked at them, the more she got the feeling that something was wrong. Something slightly off that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Her eyes blurred and she rubbed her temples. She had a headache, and she’d started her period that morning and had cramps. Maybe that was her problem. Whatever the cause, it felt so strange to be in her office once again, almost as if her real life was back on the Dora Mae, and that her life here wasn’t real. When the facts were the complete opposite. This was her life. This was real. Floating aboard a disabled yacht, surviving a storm at sea, and escaping in a drug runner’s boat-that was not her life. The horrible tangle of emotions she had for Max, the terrible feeling that she could not survive without him, was still there, right there on the peripheral of her consciousness, like a flash of light she couldn’t quite catch, or a snatch of conversation she couldn’t quite hear.

Yet there were times when she awoke and wondered if she’d dreamed of her time with Max.

Without him beside her, there was nothing to let her know that the time she’d spent with him was real. Nothing but the twisted branch of lignum vi-tae still circling her ankle. The purple flowers gone, only a few leaves remained